Ducati To Produce Desmosedici

While it has been commonly understood that today's MotoGP bikes will eventually become tomorrow's road-going sportbikes, Ducati has now placed a deadline on that dream.

The Bologna, Italy-based manufacturer chose the occasion of its bi-annual World Ducati Week in Misano to unveil the street version of its V4 Desmosedici engine, the Desmosedici RR, and announce plans to produce a complete bike by the same time in 2006.

"This is a dream for us," Ducati CEO Federico Minoli told a crowd of over 10,000 people during the unveiling of the engine on the main stage at WDW. "It is a dream that we want to put on the street simply because we have always brought to the street what we have been racing with. It will be a very limited production. We think that we will make one a day, no more. It will be very expensive. We will sell at 50,000 Euros because it has to be a dream. Our future, from the business point of view, has to be the twin because that is where our history is. But we felt that we needed to put on the street also what I call the 'Double Two' because that is what we have always done."

Nevertheless, the Desmosedici RR will be the real thing, according to Ducati Corse CEO Claudio Domenicali (pictured), the father of the Desmosedici MotoGP engine.

"We tried very hard when we decided to put the engine into production to replicate as much as possible all the features that are typical of the Desmosedici and the racing dream for MotoGP," Domenicali said. "The engine will be very exclusive. It will feature a lot of the stuff we are developing during this year for the Desmosedici MotoGP."

Coincidentally, the announcement of the Desmosedici RR comes in the same month 50 years after Fabio Taglioni left his position at Mondial and joined Ducati. Taglioni developed the Desmodromic valve system that is an engineering trademark of the brand.

"This is the way that we will celebrate the memory of Taglioni," Minoli said. "I would like to invite you all back here to World Ducati Week 2006, because that is when we will deliver the first Desmosedici RR replica."